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Sally Ride thought she’d grow up to be a physics professor, and she did. But before that, she became the first American woman in space. She went on to found Sally Ride Science, a company focused on improving science education for kids, which she called a “business imperative for the country.” She died in July, at age 61, just weeks after talking with HBR. Interviewed by Alison Beard

HBR: You’ve been described as a reluctant role model. But you’re now the public face of your company. How did you make that transition?

Ride: I never went into physics or the astronaut corps to become a role model. But after my first flight, it became clear to me that I was one. And I began to understand the importance of that to people. Young girls need to see role models in whatever careers they may choose, just so they can picture themselves doing those jobs someday. You can’t be what you can’t see.

Tell me about your decision to become an astronaut.

At the time I grew up, the space program was on the front page of the newspaper almost every day. It was the coolest thing around. I idolized the astronauts, but I never thought really seriously about becoming one. My passion was science, so when I went to college and graduate school, I was on a path to become a physicist. I wanted to work at a university as a professor and a physics researcher. Then a little while before I was set to defend my PhD thesis, I happened to read an ad in the Stanford University student newspaper saying that NASA was looking for astronauts. The moment I saw that ad I knew that that was what I really wanted to do given the opportunity. And somewhat unbelievably, NASA chose me and my life took quite a turn.

You were one of only six women in a class of 35. How did you feel about breaking ground in that way?

I didn’t really think about it as breaking ground, which seems ridiculous, but I was so excited that I had been given a chance, that I might fly in a space shuttle someday. That was really my focus.

So NASA didn’t feel like a boys club?

There was some culture shock, because they were used to male fighter pilots. But our class of 35 was much less a boys club. We spent a lot of time together, and that’s where the camaraderie was built. We had a support system, and it didn’t take very long for us to be accepted. That said, it was always comforting that there were six of us women, not two. It made it clear that NASA was committed to really bringing more gender diversity into the astronaut corps.

Why do you think NASA chose you to be the first American woman in space?

I haven’t a clue. They have their process; I think a lot of it is just the gut feeling of the people making the decision. It certainly could have been any of the six of us.

Were there any downsides to that honor?

It’s hard to call them downsides, but I did feel a lot of pressure to know my assignments as well as the men on the crew knew theirs, to be seen as an integral part of the mission, to do a good job up in space. And that pressure built through the year of training we had in preparation for the flight.

Obviously when you’re on a space mission, it’s a high-pressure, highly intimate work environment. What’s the secret to working well together in those sorts of situations?

The people that selected our crew for my first flight did a wonderful job. We got along beautifully, and by the time we launched, we were so close that it was almost like flying with four brothers. We were a pretty well-oiled machine and a very collaborative group.

The Challenger accident happened after your second space flight. You served on that investigation committee and the one that looked into the Columbia disaster 17 years later. What were the most important lessons from those incidents?

NASA had a strong reputation for quality control, risk management, and attention to detail—a real appreciation for the fact that nothing could be allowed to go wrong. But they had let their attention drift; there was more willingness to let problems be solved over time instead of immediately, and that was significant in both accidents. The people who were at NASA at the time of the Challenger accident will never forget it and took those lessons to heart. But the institution itself did not do anything to make sure that new people were taught those lessons when they came to NASA and were later elevated to positions of power. There was no official, institutionalized way to pass those lessons on. The Air Force had a fairly famous class using the Challenger accident as a case study for management training, but NASA never did, and that became apparent at the time of the Columbia accident.

NASA asked you to help develop its first strategic plan, which sounds like a bit of a departure for an astronaut turned physicist. Tell me about that process.

Although it sounds like a departure, in the training that you get as an astronaut, you really have to have a good appreciation for how all the parts to an organization fit together. The launching of the space shuttle is a very complex problem that involves thousands and thousands of people from government employees to contractors, and the astronauts have a vested interest in making sure all these parts are working well together. So although we of course don’t manage the process, we really do see everything of importance—and even the unimportant things—about our own flight and have input in those decisions. So I had a lot more experience in management and planning than you might expect. I was assigned to NASA headquarters for about two years, and I was proud of the document we produced and the process we put in place to get people to think about the future. It’s much different from a space mission, but it’s definitely a process where collaboration is critical. It requires facilitating discussions, listening to people’s opinions, and generating a collegial atmosphere so that you can put together a strategic vision that represents the whole organization.

Why did you decide to leave NASA when you did?

I always planned to go back to academia because I loved it—loved physics and research, learning things, teaching, investigation, and pushing frontiers. I was going to leave after my third flight, and had been assigned to it. But once the Challenger accident occurred, the space shuttle was grounded for almost three years. It was just a horrible time to leave. So I stayed through the investigation and for a little over a year after that, but it was long wait for me. You start to forget what you knew, and it becomes harder and harder to dust off the cobwebs and begin research collaboration again. So if I was going to get back into academia, I really needed to do it then.

You became an entrepreneur as well, by launching Sally Ride Science.

I was a professor for about 15 years, and most of the time I was involved in some sort of education outreach. I discovered that I really had a passion for working with k–12 students and teachers, because so many of them have a real interest in science that they lose as they’re going through school. It grew to the point where I wanted to form a company that could focus even more tightly on fourth through eighth grade, where we start to lose students, particularly girls and minorities. A sabbatical of two years turned into three years, which turned into four years. I was just enjoying it so much that I eventually decided to retire as a professor.

What’s wrong with science and technology education today?

First, just to step back, this really is a business imperative for the country. Our education system just isn’t producing the workforce that we need to compete globally. If you talk to just about any corporate leader in the tech sector, they will agree with that. We’re also failing the kids in the system because we’re not providing them with the skills they need to succeed. Not only do we need the next generation of rocket scientists and environmental engineers, but we need to provide a good science, math, and technology background to all students. By the time they graduate they’re going to need those skills just to get basic living-wage jobs and to be scientifically literate citizens who can make informed decisions about their health or environmental issues. So I think we need to change the way we teach science. There are certain scientific concepts that students need to understand. Let’s focus on those instead of having them memorize a set of facts. We also need to significantly improve the quality of science and math teachers, particularly elementary teachers, who typically have very little background in science and so are not comfortable teaching it and don’t know how to really excite and engage kids. Unless you give students an appreciation for why this is important and why it is, by the way, really cool stuff, they’re going to drift away from it. So we need to give teachers a better background as they’re going through their training and with continuing professional development.

It sounds like you’ve moved on from pursuing innovation in science and aeronautics to pursuing innovation in education. What’s the best way to spur innovative ideas in any field?

What you find is that there are a zillion ideas out there from an awful lot of innovative people, but they’re working at the local level and may not have the wherewithal to bring their ideas to a bigger audience—say, an entire school district or an entire state. So I think it’s less about trying to generate a whole new set of ideas and more about bringing all the good ideas together, prioritizing them, and giving them the impetus they need to have an impact on a scale larger than they do now.

Sally Ride Science is a for-profit business with a public mission, and now NASA is partnering with private companies on human space exploration. Why commercialize those sorts of endeavors?

At Sally Ride Science, we felt it was important to do this as a commercial business because then we would be held to a different standard of managing the company. We would have to run an efficient organization and to produce things that school districts or teachers or parents would pay for. That same thinking applies to commercial space. The companies that have sprung up and been quite successful in their admittedly early stages have a strong belief that they can do things more efficiently than the government can. Of course, they don’t have the luxury of layers and layers of oversight and quality control that NASA is able to put onto a project, so I think that’s the balancing act. My strong preference would have been to continue the shuttle program while we were actively pursuing the commercial route. Now we’re left with a six- or seven-year gap during which we will not be able to launch people into space. But it just proved impossible to give the appropriate focus to both, so the decision was made to focus on the commercial.

We talked before about your being a role model, and now you’re obviously the public face of Sally Ride Science. But at the same time you’re still a very private person. You’ve turned down endorsements, biography deals, other offers. How do you navigate that divide between your public life and your private life?

The way I manage it is to have a good understanding of what I think it’s important to use my name for and to put my energy behind. For the past many years it’s been science education. Once I had that clear focus, it was easy to let go of and graciously decline other opportunities that I was offered.

Have things changed for women in the sciences since you started your career?

They haven’t changed as much as many of us would like. But change is difficult. It takes time for lots of girls to graduate from high school and go into college and major in physics or engineering and get into the workforce. Now the pipeline is filling, but there are other issues related to the culture of the business, the culture of academia. There’s the natural tendency for a group to replicate itself, so in the hiring process if you have a department of 20 males, they tend to hire males. It’s very difficult to break out of that. This is particularly true in the tech industry, the defense industry, and aerospace. You see a lower percentage of women than I think everybody would like. But you can point to the companies that have put a focus on this over the past two decades, and the differences are palpable. This is one of those areas that until you reach a critical mass, you just have to stay vigilant.

A version of this article appeared in the September 2012 issue of Harvard Business Review.